Tuesday, 23 September 2008

Gail Kinn and Jim Piazza's new book, The Greatest Movies Ever: The Ultimate Ranked List Of The 101 Best Films Of All Time!, is an updated of their previous Four-Star Movies, published in 2003. (Each book actually lists 102 films, because The Godfather and The Godfather II appear as a single entry at #1.)

For the new list, seven titles have been removed: Raise The Red Lantern, Saturday Night Fever, Belle De Jour, Thelma & Louise, Airplane!, Terminator II, and The Bridge On The River Kwai. Many titles occupy exactly (or almost exactly) the same positions in the new version, though there are a few dramatic changes: The Manchurian Candidate drops from #23 all the way down to #94, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid drops from #62 to #90, The Graduate drops from #18 to #33, and Sunset Boulevard climbs from #19 to #4.

The authors haven't included any silent films, noting that silent cinema is "too rich to sandwich in with a token choice or two". Of course, the same case could be made for Japanese or French cinema, each of which is indeed represented by less than a handful of titles. A list of 101 greatest films is, by its very nature, a reductivist exercise, so I'm not really convinced by the exclusion of silent movies.

1 comment(s):

Although I do like the book, I have noticed some errors. For instance claiming Henry Fonda as the winner of a Best Actor Oscar for Grapes of Wrath. It was Jimmy Stewart in The Philadelphia Story. Most film buffs know Fonda didn't win an Oscar until On Golden Pond.